1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a mobile communication terminal and, more particularly, to a character input method for a mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Advances in communication technologies have enabled popularization of mobile communication terminals. In addition to conventional phone call processing, advanced mobile communication terminals support various functions including text message and image transmission. Thereby users utilize mobile communication terminals more and more in their daily lives. For example, mobile communication terminals are used to perform various tasks, such as placement of calls, photographing, schedule management, reception of moving pictures and music, gaming, etc.
With increased utilization of a mobile communication terminal, there is an increasing need for a user to input characters to their mobile communication terminal. For example, character input is necessary to input text for message transmission, input data on events and associated times for schedule management, and input names of images that are captured by a digital camera equipped in a mobile communication terminal.
For high portability, the keypad of a mobile communication terminal is limited in size, and therefore the number of key buttons installable on a mobile communication terminal is limited. To solve this problem, multiple input modes are provided to a mobile communication terminal, and a key is mapped to a different character according to a current input mode. For example, a mobile communication terminal may have separate input modes for Korean characters, English upper-case letters, English lower-case letters, numeric digits, and special characters. Thus, a single key is mapped to one of a Korean letter, English upper-case letter, English lower-case letter, numeric digit and special character, depending upon the current input mode.
However, in a general mobile communication terminal having, for example, twelve keys, the keys are insufficient to cover all characters in a particular input mode. Consequently, some of the keys must be mapped to multiple characters in an input mode. For example, when a key ‘1’ is mapped to characters ‘q’ and ‘z’ in a lower-case letter input mode, the characters ‘q’ and ‘z’ are alternately displayed in an input box whenever the key ‘1’ is pressed. Hence, the user may have to press the key ‘1’ two times to input the character ‘z’.
For more convenient character input, a “QWERTY phone” (a mobile communication terminal whose keypad is a QWERTY keypad, similar to that of a computer) has been developed. In a QWERTY phone, a key is mapped to one character in an input mode.
However, even in a QWERTY phone, keys are not separately mapped to numeric digits. When the user desires to input a number to their QWERTY phone during character input, the user may have to switch the current input mode to a number input mode. Further, when the user inputs character data, numeric data such as a phone number or year, and character data in that order, the user is inconvenienced by having to repeatedly switch between input modes.